Introduction

Zimbabwe, like most newly independent states, is still attempting to construct its populist nationhood, now under the dominating ideas of a black male elite. But not all of its citizens, especially women and nonblacks, construct their identities and relationships to the state in ways that are congruent with the state's contemporary construction of a national identity for its citizens. In the ongoing political fight to delimit citizenship, reflecting differing ideological notions about the ‘proper relationship between the individual and society’ (Blackburn 1993: 1), these competing definitions of citizenship seem to be regarded as ‘borderline’ constructions by the social categories who do not accept them. In this chapter, I explore discrepancies between the Zimbabwean state and a particular category of its internationally mobile citizens over the construction of citizenship as identity in the ‘cultural mindset’ of transborder traders, a mindset that seems not to be anchored in the territory of any nation-state, but does respond to the laws of the state of citizenship.